Vikings stadium: Dayton aide to chair oversight panel

Gov. Mark Dayton has tapped his deputy chief of staff to oversee efforts to build the new Vikings stadium he spent much of the last session championing.

Michele Kelm-Helgen will chair the five-member Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, charged with acquiring land and overseeing design and construction of the new stadium.

"She's one of the smartest people I know," said chief of staff Tina Smith, speaking at a news conference Thursday, June 14, for the governor, who is on a trade trip in China.

Kelm-Helgen will give up her administration job to run the new public body, which replaces the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, owner and operator of the Metrodome.

She previously served as chief of staff for the state Senate, as partner at the government affairs consulting firm North State Advisers and as director at Control Data Corp., now known as Ceridian. She earned an MBA from the University of St. Thomas and a bachelor's degree from St. Catherine University.

She has a deep DFL pedigree: Her dad, Tom Kelm, served as Gov. Wendell Anderson's chief of staff, and her grandfather, Elmer Kelm, negotiated the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties in 1944.

Kelm-Helgen said she's "tremendously honored that the governor would trust me," and she pledged to bring the $975 million stadium project in on time and on budget.

She said she knew she was in the running for the job for the past few days and made up her mind to take it on Thursday.

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The law sets a 30-day deadline for appointments to the authority to be made, and that time was running out. The House and Senate passed the stadium bill May 10.

Along with Kelm-Helgen, Dayton appointed former NFL player and former Republican Senate minority leader Duane Benson and John Griffith, executive vice president of property development for Target Corporation.

Benson, a member of the Board of Trustees for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system and executive director of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation, has also been a consultant to Tunheim Partners, a public relations firm that represents the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission. A spokesman for the firm said Benson resigned as soon as he found out he had been nominated to the new authority.

Kelm-Helgen said the group may be able to meet for the first time as early as next week.

Asked why Ted Mondale, chair of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission who was Dayton's point man in developing the stadium project, wasn't named to the authority, Smith called Mondale a "crucial leader of this effort" and reminded reporters that the authority can hire an executive director.

She didn't specify whether Mondale is in the running for that job, and Mondale, through a spokesman, declined comment.

Asked whether having executives from Target and Capella on the stadium authority would have any effect on those entities potentially bidding on stadium naming rights, Smith didn't answer directly but said authority members would have to abide by conflict-of-interest rules like members of any public body.

The state is chipping in $348 million for the 65,000-seat stadium, to be built on the site of the Metrodome in Minneapolis. Minneapolis taxes will pay for another $150 million, and the Vikings will contribute $477 million.

The new public stadium authority will be overseen by a Legislative Commission on Minnesota Sports Facilities, made up of state lawmakers.